Those of us who come to Christ as kids don’t have as easy of a time as others in understanding our deadness in our sins. We may not have a whole lot of experience walking in sin as a son of disobedience.

But we are all dead in our sin. Our sin nature is death to us. We all live under the curse from the Garden of Eden. We all want to be like God; we want to be our own god.

We want to provide for ourselves, protect ourselves, plan our futures, and on and on. But these are God’s roles.

When we complain, we are saying we would make a better God. We would have done things in a better way.

When we’re unforgiving, we are acting as the righteous judge that only God is.

When we’re proud, we’re acting like we’ve done something on our own and aren’t recognizing how we could have done absolutely nothing without God, who allows us even our next breath.

Our passions and desires might even look godly on the outside, but they could have a wrong heart motivation. We are children of wrath as much as any villain.

But God…

We were children of wrath, but God had chosen us for Himself.

Because of His great love and the richness of His mercy, He made us His children, giving us life with Christ, joining us to Christ, giving us a seat in the heavenly places with Christ.

It’s a grace gift, a completely undeserved gift. There’s no good in us that’s not God working in and through us.

We get no boasting in our salvation. God chose us before we existed, not because of the good we did for Him. All the good we ever do, we do because He does it through us. It’s all from Him. He created those good works, prepared them for us and then moved us in them. It’s all Him.

There is no boasting, only thanksgiving. By grace you have been saved.